Posted
by
timothy
on Friday April 03, 2009 @01:36AM
from the back-to-corked-bottles dept.

iamnot writes "The new IPRED law came into effect in a big way in Sweden on April 1st. A news report has come out showing that internet traffic dropped by 30% from March 31st to April 1st. A lawyer from the Swedish anti-piracy agency was quoted as saying that the drop in traffic 'sends a very strong signal that the legislation works.' Is the new law, which allows for copyright holders to request the identification of people sharing files, truly curing people of their evil ways? Or perhaps it is just taking some time for Swedish downloaders to figure out the new IPREDator VPN system from The Pirate Bay."

Ehh, no? I can't imagine the weather having much impact on Bittorrent traffic. It's not like you sit and watch the downloads after you have started them, do you? You start the download, then do something else (on or off the computer).
There may be a summer reduction in Internet traffic due to students leaving campus, but I really doubt that has anything to do with the weather.

If I'm spending more time outside, that means less time inside, which means less time available to watch movies and use the computer, which means less reason to bother downloading movies, games, and apps (unless you are simply a hoarder).

It surely does, especially as the daylight hours get longer as the summer approaches. People watch a lot of TV series and movies during the dark winter hours, and much less during the light and warm summers. Note that in northen Sweden, sun doesn't set at all during summer, while in winter the sun never rise. In the more populated areas, like Stockholm, it's not quite as bad but the difference in the amount of daylight is still very big:

Even if they can't route around it (or until they do), the summary may be right that this is a sign the legislation is working.

If I went round to every persons house, put a gun to their head, and told them I would shoot them if they kept sharing files, I think you would also see a dip in the stats like this.

Just because it works, it doesn't mean that its reasonable, proportional or fair. Luckily, like the gun example, the authorities/record labels will need to follow through with their threats. As soon as people realise that people aren't being shot for sharing, they'll start again. And if people are shot for sharing, there'll be protests on the streets. Not what any government wants.

I doubt it would work like that. Protests in the streets? I don't hear about a single street protest anytime a big tracker gets taken down, a **AA lobbies for some ridiculous new regulation, or ISPs voluntarily do something obviously unreasonable and unfair to their customers. We're going to bend over and we're going to take it. If we'd been fighting against regulation like this before, it wouldn't have gotten this far.

the summary may be right that this is a sign the legislation is working.

Not really. If you look at the longer term statistics the actual situation is that in the last 6 months prior to the legislation coming into effect there was a massive drawn out flood of traffic, almost doubling ordinary levels. What's happening now is that it's falling back to what it was before.

So the only effect was that people started downloading like crazy just in case, in anticipation of an event of unknown consequences. That it's only dropped back to normal levels is more surprising really; with the previous levels of traffic one might assume that some may have material to last them for years.

I have my doubts this drop has anything to do with either Piratebay or the new law.

Usage probably dropped-off due to fears over Conficker, as people avoided using their internet on April 1 (including me), and waited to see if there would be any carnage. But never mind the truth. Politicians would rather grasp any straw no matter how flimsy, to justify their acts.

The MAFIAAs of the world already do that - setup fake torrents that contain nothing but empty data. I recall downloading an episode of Rome, and I wondered why I was able to get a 350 megabyte file in just a few minutes. Turned-out it was a playable video that was completely black and only 5 minutes long.

If that were the case, the decrease in traffic would be seen everywhere. The IPRED law is only effect in Europe. (maybe just in sweden? I can't tell) So check the traffic in the US for 4/1, if it goes down too, then it's not due to this law. If it's unaffected, then it's probably due to this law.

Let me know at the end of April, if the amount is significantly lower than March.

It will most likely be significantly lower than March. This years March, however, was almost double last years March, so one might expect this years April to be more in line with last years April.

Look at the longer term statistics at http://stats.autonomica.se/mrtg/sums/Stockholm_GE.html [autonomica.se] and you'll note that the change in traffic isn't so much a drop as it is a return to normal after a massive 6-9 month spike. People aren't downloading less than usual, they have been downloading much much more than usual just in case.

...statistics on how much traffic ramped UP in the days and weeks before April 1st. I imagine that some where afraid of the new laws, and they where getting in some last-minute downloads before they had to cut the line and look for new methods to hide their traffic.

That's a pretty regular usage if we're looking at a University (or something that feeds a Uni), which I suspect we are. You get growth starting around August when the kids arrive and start figuring out how to maximize their resources, a leveling off once they do maximize resources, a dip during the holidays, and finally followed by a return to previous stable levels. This is all against a slight slope in the curve, because bandwidth consumption is always rising on average.

25% said they would stop file sharing if IPRED became reality, and it seems they did..:-) There's a huge build out of broadband in Stockholm and Sweden right now, lots of people are getting 100mbps. So things will change, especially with tech like One swarm that will multiply the bandwidth.

Don't you see that the constant raising of stakes is simply going to end up fucking over everyone's civil rights in the end?

Cry all you want about the legitimacy of file sharing and how old media needs to adapt to the current technology, it's still legally questionable to "share" copyright works.

So now they make a law to get the names of users. You decide to start using VPN. They decide to outlaw VPN to certain IPs. You decide to use roaming servers. They decide to make filesharing software illegal.

Then everyone loses. Not just you guys who want to get your music and movies for free.

LISTER: You want to talk? Let's talk.
SIMULANT: You have no weapon?
LISTER: No. You have no weapon?
SIMULANT: No.

They walk towards each other.

SIMULANT: Guess what? (Pulls out hunting knife.) I lied.
LISTER: Guess what? (Allows pole to slide from the arm of his jacket.)
So did I.
SIMULANT: But I lied twice. (Pulls out a handgun.)
LISTER: Smeg, I didn't think of that.

You see, what you're doing here is blaming the victim.Yes, the victim.

Very few file-sharers have the capacity to buy the stuff they download, they are just tagging along in what is a part of their culture, a culture which the media conglomerate has built very effectively.

So, the choice is to be left out of the loop on everyday culture or pirate.

Also, do you honestly believe that most of the restraints from the government wouldn't happen regardless?Governments want control, they will seize any opportunity to

Very few file-sharers have the capacity to buy the stuff they download, they are just tagging along in what is a part of their culture, a culture which the media conglomerate has built very effectively.

A dollar a song, Bunky. Or less. Two bucks for a video. There's your pop culture, reasonably priced. Listen to music for free on Pandora, or watch TV for free on Hulu. Your culture's all covered, Ace.

Oh, wait, you want PhotoShop and Dreamweaver for free? And free development tools are part of your culture... how again? Besides, your "culture" has already kicked out a response to this, it's called "Open Source Alternatives." Are they as good as the professional closed source originals? Usually not, but they're close, and they're free. Want better? Get a job.

I forget... what was your argument again? Oh, yeah: So, the choice is to be left out of the loop on everyday culture or pirate. And the funny thing about that is, wait until you have kids: you'll be praying to God every night that they somehow manage to avoid the "everyday culture."

>>>I cannot for a moment imagine -- and would be embarrassed to admit to -- living in a country where I had to import my *culture* from overseas.

You just insulted the entire European Union -- 500 million people -- who voraciously import American music, movies, and tv shows. Nice job bro.

The fact of the matter is that western culture operates as a whole, and has for centuries with Italians listening to German Bach, and Germans listening to Italian Vivaldi, but record companies want to erect artificial barriers in order to stop this sharing between nations and the Euro-Canadian-American western civilization. It is the record companies that are in the wrong, and abusing copyright which was originally intended to PROMOTE the growth of culture, not stifle it.

In a truly operative copyright regime, Europeans could watch hulu.com, Americans could watch cbc.com, and Canadians could watch bbc.com without any limitation. And after a reasonable length, say 50 years, the media would become public domain.

Entertainment is not culture. You know how I know this? Because I have a God-given right to my culture.

God doesn't make laws, so leave him out of this. He's not relevant.

You do NOT have a right to your culture. Copyright law prevents this! Copyright is supposed to expire so that when things DO become part of the culture you can utilize and redistribute them. Unfortunately, copyright extensions have completely eliminated the whole fucking idea. The extensions were bought and paid for by the corporations whose profits you are so concerned about. They were neither desired nor voted for by the general public of

>>>He was confusing -- either disingenuously or because he's an idiot -- culture and entertainment.

No he wasn't. Culture and entertainment are closely linked, and often the very same thing. When you listen to Mozart, you're not being entertained, but also absorbing German-Austrian culture. Or vice-versa if you're an European reading Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, that too is not just entertainment, but also a part of American culture.

If people are going into debt to sustain the entertainment industry, something's wrong.

I agree. If they're such pop culture addicts, they should be getting their fix from the Public Library, getting the most from their tax dollars.

But it has nothing to do with the prices set by the entertainment industry for its wares. If Jobs had set iTunes downloads at $5.99 per song, it would have failed. He set it at $0.99/song, and it's a raging success. That's the price that the majority of people were willing to

And then I had this flash that the same thinking is why the US economy is where it is.

When you steal/borrow what you can't afford, everyone loses in the long run.

Of course, that's an oversimplification of the respective situations... but it was just weird how I went from "What you talkin' bout Willis?" to "That thinking is why the country is trillions in debt and my GFs retired parents might lose their house*" in the span of a second.

*(not because they borrowed too much, but because their retirement funds took a nose dive when everyone else borrowed too much)

You see, what you're doing here is blaming the victim.Yes, the victim.

Very few file-sharers have the capacity to buy the stuff they download, they are just tagging along in what is a part of their culture, a culture which the media conglomerate has built very effectively.

So, the choice is to be left out of the loop on everyday culture or pirate.

This is me playing the worlds smallest violin for all those poor file-sharers denied access to the latest Jonas Brothers CD or Wolverine movie.

You can't afford it, then don't buy it. Your rationalization for stealing whatever isn't nailed down because it's easy and available are complete bullshit. People with talent and skill work to create things you will never be capable of creating yourself. You derive enough enjoyment from them to take the time to steal them, you should be paying for them.

Then everyone loses. Not just you guys who want to get your music and movies for free.

Funny how I see the exact same pattern but I interpret it as a good thing.

An arms race between government and the people that has the people as the ultimate winner? It's better than good.

The method of slowly pushing the commoners down and the rulers up doesn't stop with a reasonable and gradual struggle to make the situation more balanced. It stops when the commoners revolt, the powerful raise their armies against them and discover that those armies are too heavily outnumbered.

The method of slowly pushing the commoners down and the rulers up doesn't stop with a reasonable and gradual struggle to make the situation more balanced. It stops when the commoners revolt, the powerful raise their armies against them and discover that those armies are too heavily outnumbered.

Except that in this case people aren't upset enough to start revolting, and distracted by all the comforts of modern society. The few angry nerds are making big talk on the internet, but the common Joe flips the channel on his TV and probably doesn't even know about the problem.

Remember that it takes a lack of food and a lack of distractions to create a revolt. "Then let them eat cake" is something few politician will utter today. If anything, the past couple of years in politics have more than once proven

I just figure it's a moral issue. The only reason Copyright is mentioned in the Constitution of the United States is because without it there would have been less of a chance for the newly founded country to build its own culture. However, corporations have turned Copyright into a method for perpetual ownership. As this is not what was intended, I feel no moral obligation to support them.

I do not go out of my way to obtain what I want for free, but I also do not feel I am doing anything wrong when I do.

IANAL, but there is a passage in the swedish constitution regarding right of speech (yttrandefrihetsgrundlagen, SFS 1991:1469, which I re-read for this reason, just a few days ago) that prohibits laws being passed to outlaw equipment used for sending or receiving radio programmes or any form of recording of text, images and/or sound. It leaves a small hole for laws that require a license send things wirelessly, but is quite strict on things passing through wires.

Banning VPNs or even torrents is as far as I can tell, against the swedish constitution.

You can read it yourself here: http://www.riksdagen.se/templates/R_Page____6316.aspx

Chapter 1, article 3 prevents banning ownership and usage, on grounds of content, of tools needed for reception and parsing a message intended for the general public.Chapter 3, article 10 would relate to ISP (common carrier) content filtering.

Funny thing the swedish parliament has passed so many stupid laws in recent years, when the constitution contains so many Good articles!

Just as my bet is on the handful of guys inside the G20 meeting and not on the thousands of idiots getting beat down outside, my bet is on the handful of guys getting laws passed and not the millions of idiots trying to avoid getting caught breaking the law.

IPRED has made the Pireate Party much more attractive. Somenone posted a link [slashdot.org] to their membership statistics page. Look at what happened after IPRED: A membership surge that doesn't look like it's over yet.

If the Pirate Party manages to become important enough to be considered for a government coalition you can bet that the other parties are going to re-evaluate their stance on filesharing. Getting into the government is more important to them than anything they might or might not believe in, so they'll c

Lolz. You sure do live up to your nic."Everybody" is not just "the millions of idiots trying to avoid getting caught breaking the law" it is EVERYBODY.I would have though you could do better than that seeing as how it was YOU who brought them all into the fold when you wrote that "Everyone loses." That was the entire point of your original post wasn't it? To show that it wasn't just "the millions of idiots trying to avoid getting caught breaking the law" who were going to suffer as a result, right?

I, and I bet many others with me, don't think it's fun anymore. While a good many proceeds to download songs, movies and TV series using other protocols than e.g. torrents, there are those that recognize that it's not a sustainable situation. I stopped downloading questionable material the 31st of March.

Legislation will get worse and worse to the point where we are all under constant surveillance. We don't need to give "them" any more leverage to these draconian laws. We are in our right to fileshare on a personal level - that is, with friends and family. Let's stop filesharing with "strangers" and we're untouchable.

I fail to see your point. Downloading stuff that the authors seems to completely hate you for is somehow Freedom?

No. That's a childish approach. With freedom comes responsibility. Now, I think the industry is behaving like a rabies dog but they're within their rights to disallow us to copy their material without giving them a krona.

Freedom is to being able to NOT BUY INTO THEIR SHIT. Accept their rules since it's in fact codified, but refuse to participate in transactions with them unless you're offered a FAIR DEAL and things YOU ACTUALLY WANT.

Fair points which I certainly agree to. I rest my case, however: I will not let lobby organizations like the MPAA or RIAA have more power than any other company in the world. If they start acting like the police, some authority should stop them instead of making their lives easier.

So, we are all like you and all stop filesharing. It's not like the surveillance will stop all of a sudden, enough alternative reasons to extend the surveillance will come up. Current german minister wanting to censor child porn websites, etc.

It's a bit naive to think that these regulations are related to the actual behavior of the population, there just needs to be an excuse that sounds reasonable enough to most of the population to accept it.

The GP is wrong. The only thing that can wreck the internet (in your part of the world) is *you*. Specifically, it's people like you who refuse to protect the internet from censorship. The reason is irrelevant.

Have you forgotten about the terrorists? They are just as good a reason for censoring the net than filesharing, or X numbers of other lame excuses. If you want the internet to be free from censorship in Sweden, you have to fight by imposing your will on your politicians.

At the moment, you and the GP have battered wife syndrome, you are saying it's us, if we change then the politicians and other bad people will have no reason to do this to us..

Guess what? Your internet will be censored unless you stand up and say no. That means, not accepting simplistic demonizations of filesharers, and not accepting the travesty of copyright that now exists.
Your culture is being taken away from you *today* through stupid international copyright extensions. Death of author + 70 years means you don't get to read a book freely, your children don't get to read freely, your grandchildren don't get to read freely, and on and on. When your kids ask you what you did to make the world a better place, what will you say to them?

I am one of the original founding members of the Open Rights Group [openrightsgroup.org] in the UK and I've several times debated with my elected representatives about protecting various freedoms on the Internet. I don't have "battered wife syndrome" and I do take active steps to try and protect my freedoms. I don't know anything about you, but there's a good chance I've done more than you have to try and keep the Internet free. But that doesn't mean I need to disregard facts that seem inconvenient. Wide-spread piracy provides a powerful justification for attempts to stop it. And I don't know of any methods of stopping it that don't have the rights of innocent people stepped on as collateral damage, or that don't allow an opening for the government to insert a little scope-creep for political purposes. So in addition to fighting against infringements of my freedom, I (like the earlier poster) point out the flaws in the arguments of piracy proponents who are provoking a lot of these measures for the sake of not paying for music or movies or books.

Wide-spread piracy provides a powerful justification for attempts to stop it. And I don't know of any methods of stopping it that don't have the rights of innocent people stepped on as collateral damage, or that don't allow an opening for the government to insert a little scope-creep for political purposes.

I do: legalize what the pirates are doing. Abolish copyright.

"Piracy proponents" aren't provoking these measures; the bloated copyright-based industries are. Try directing your anger at the people who are pushing for more and more restrictions on communication and technology, not the people who want to share information and be left alone.

"Piracy proponents" aren't provoking these measures; the bloated copyright-based industries are. Try directing your anger at the people who are pushing for more and more restrictions on communication and technology, not the people who want to share information and be left alone.

Take a look at the link I posted to the organization I financially support. You will see that one of our activities is opposing copyright term extension in Europe, briefing MEPs and the media on the subject. What have you done to fi

I disagree to some extent. It's in many cases not the "authors" who hate you for downloading the material. In England for example, 140 artists has organized to let their fans download their material peer-to-peer (artists including Radiohead, Peter Gabriel, Annie Lennox and Robbie Williams). As for Sweden, one of the most popular artists, Håkan Hellström, is used in the record companies arguments to forbid filesharing, when in fact Hellström himself at numerous occasions has said that he rather see people downloading his music for free than not beeing able to listen to him to the extent they want to.
So freedom in this case is NOT turning against the artists or authors. (Writer Marcus Birro said in his radio program Karlavagnen that if people read you texts for free, then maybe you can do something else to earn your living, as long as you get the message out there. Like having your own radio show, perhaps?)
I think the truth is that the record companies see a future where they are disposable. And if they continue to criminalize their onwn customers instead of adobting to the new techdriven "set of rules" in society, they will be. But it seems as for now they actually think it's more convinient to legislate than finding new business models.

I agree, it's not the authors that hate file-sharing. Essentially, file-sharing is advertising for the authors, "paid for" by the music labels. Muscians in general make most of their money from performances and concerts. I read somewhere that only 4 out of the top 50 top-revenue-earning-artists made more money from selling cds than from performing.

For some proof, there's a similar artist coalition in Canada called "the Canadian Music Creators Coalition"

Until now, a group of multinational record labels has done most of the talking about what Canadian artists need out of copyright. Record companies and music publishers are not our enemies, but let's be clear: lobbyists for major labels are looking out for their shareholders, and seldom speak for Canadian artists. Legislative proposals that would facilitate lawsuits against our fans or increase the labels' control over the enjoyment of music are made not in our names, but on behalf of the labels' foreign parent companies.

Montreal, January 30, 2007 - Nielsen SoundScan numbers released January 17th show that Canada's digital download market grew more than any major market in 2006. This exciting news has the Canadian Music Creators Coalition asking: 'Why are the record labels still pushing for ways to sue Canadian music fans?'

And then in 2008, Canada again outperforms U.S. in digital sales, and Industry Canada commissions a study which shows a positive correlation between file sharing and music purchasing. CMCC argues against anti-circumvention legislation. link Michael Geist [michaelgeist.ca]

Now, I think the industry is behaving like a rabies dog but they're within their rights to disallow us to copy their material without giving them a krona.

No, they're not. They're trying to sell air based on laws that originally regulated a privileged few among themselves. In the days where not everyone could afford a 'copying machine' it was perfectly okay. Things have changed, laws essentially didn't. I, for one, oppose any law that criminalizes a significant portion of the population without any benefit whatsoever in return. Intellectual Property doesn't exist. Get over it.

Freedom is to being able to NOT BUY INTO THEIR SHIT. Accept their rules since it's in fact codified, but refuse to participate in transactions with them unless you're offered a FAIR DEAL and things YOU ACTUALLY WANT.

I accept their rules as soon as they stop writing new ones when not enough people are breaking the existing ones.

Good for you for doing what you think right and all, but my opinion is that these industries are on an all-out campaign to keep their stranglehold on the "industry" of entertainment, milking as much money as they can possibly get their hands on, so I really don't give a damn what they think is fair. They want to bend me over, I'm going to chase them around and bend them over instead, if I can.

Legislation will get worse and worse to the point where we are all under constant surveillance. We don't need to give "them" any more leverage to these draconian laws. We are in our right to fileshare on a personal level - that is, with friends and family. Let's stop filesharing with "strangers" and we're untouchable.

Why? Do you think your rights will be protected if you bend over? Do your think they'll let you file share with friends and family? Hint: DRM, anti-DRM laws and other crippleware. Sharing with my friends that again share with their friends only leads to to six degrees of Kevin Bacon before everyone from me to the Pope has it. They will not stop until such a thing as private communication is brought to an end. If you are Swedish you should know about FRA, IPRED, that just recently Aktuelt showed another proposal from the government to give SEPO access to FRA surveilance and so on. Already the EU directive on telecommunications is supposed to keep tabs on everyone you're in contact with, as you say laws are being put in place to shut down all anonymizing services, open access points and so forth. And this doesn't bother you? You just want to play along "by the rules", in your own words? You want to do the same when they require that everything you do be decrypted and passed through their proxies so they can be sure you're not a vicious file sharer too?

I would say: fight it [piratpartiet.se]. The Pirate Party has increased massively in size the last six months and keep reaching new heights. They're now chasing Folkpartiet in membership counts and is Sweden's second biggest youth party - if they keep going like they have in the last months they'll be the biggest soon. This is pretty much a whole generation saying "we want file sharing". If you're Swedish, help them out in the EU election in June - Europe needs someone to speak up against all the Orwellian laws showing up all over the place. Because it will not get better by itself, it'll only get worse. I've decided to donate to them even though I'm in Norway, noone here seems to have the balls to stand up to the EU, which has become the place to pass all the unpopular laws and for national politicans to just throw up their hands and say "we must".

I'm in Norway, noone here seems to have the balls to stand up to the EU, which has become the place to pass all the unpopular laws and for national politicans to just throw up their hands and say "we must"

You miss the point of the EU. It's one of the most successful policy laundering institutions in the world (WIPO is another).

The EU isn't punting the Orwellian crap: the national governments push it to the EU, knowing that it will be as popular as a rat sandwich to their domestic populations. So, once it gets bullied, cajoled and pushed through as an EU directive, those same governments turn around to their electorates and say "Oh, we have to do this now, it's an EU directive, and we ain't got no say in the matter".

The Data Retention Directive, for instance, is a creation of the UK government. When introducing the legislation to Parliament, they specifically said that it had to be done because it was an EU Directive. No mention that it was their EU directive.

Unfortunately, even if everyone stopping pirating today, legislation will still get worse and worse. The fact that pirating is possible at all still gives enough incentive to special interest groups like the RIAA (and Sweden's equivalent) to continue lobbying. In fact, it will be even easier for them, since the only thing holding back the politicians is the fact that there are at least some people fighting back.

Despite what we wish in our hearts, politicians never look out for "the common good". You have to

If they cannot offer me what I want (unencumbered digital music), then I simply do not buy from them.

THAT is the solution to the problem, NOT illegal file sharing.

Money talks. Politicians listen to money. In fact, if yours are like ours, MONEY is the ONLY thing they listen to, which is why lobbyists bring suitcase loads of it to washington to bribe the politicians. They call it "campaign contributions". Ya, right.

... how they're going to stay online. The service itself has to be hosted somewhere where they won't have too much hassle with the constant influx of copyright complaints. The *AA companies will then be able to kill two of birds with one (or the cardinality of the userbase with one stone) by just getting whatever details about IPREDator they need and taking them to court for their illegal downloading.
We have to remember: while The Pirate Bay remains legal, the illegal downloading has always been, and I'm very interested in details as to how they keep this service running in any country if they claim responsibility of their users' actions.

Are you saying that the 30Gb/s is 'free speech'? People have suddenly stopped making forum posts or blogging to the tune of that overnight? Why would they? Bizarre.

Are you saying that the 30Gb/s is 'fair use'? Although perhaps the view of a minority, it's not commonly seen that pirating games is fair use.

Free speech and fair use aren't limited to forum posts. Free speech and fair use *are* frequently squashed by legislation ostensibly not targeting them. I have personally chosen to say many things anonymously because I am not willing to deal with a remote but real possibility that I'll be dragged into court to prove I'm not a terrorist. Some things I have chosen not to say at all, not because they are illegal, but because lawyers commonly hold them to be

Of course it works. In Norway there has been serious talks (like, not only nerds in basements) about not routing traffic through Sweden anymore. I don't know if anything came out of it, but I'm willing to bet it's affecting long-term plans on where to build pipelines.

The bill doesn't just cover traffic to/from swedish households, it covers all traffic entering and leaving the country.

The arguments for implementing and enforcing this law is to "encourage legal alternatives". So, after a 30% drop if file-sharing traffic, we'd expect to see a 30% increase in sales of CDs, DVDs and e-books. Or, there is no correlation between downloads and lost sales, just as a bunch of scientific reports suggest.

Anyone care to wager that this purported increase in sales will not, in fact, happen?

Wouldn't it be funny if sales of music dropped even more now that people don't sample before they buy. Other wise they'll just blame is on some new fangled technology that they now need to also make illegal because since there was no increase in sales people must have moved onto this new secret technology to steal even more music.

So, after a 30% drop if file-sharing traffic, we'd expect to see a 30% increase in sales of CDs, DVDs and e-books.

Let's assume that file-sharing covers 1% of all media consumption and direct sales the remaining 99%.

A 30% drop is to 0.7%, so sales increase to 99.3%, a whopping 0.[recurring:30]% increase over what it was, or.3% in absolute terms.

Your numbers seem to work if it's 50:50 instead of 1:99. If you want an absolute (not relative) increase by 30%, then you need it to be 100:0, i.e. everything is file-shared. That doesn't make sense--who seeds?

I know I avoided pretty much the entire Internet like the plague April 1. It really is quite the annoying day to be online, what with Youtube going upside down or whatever.
Does it explain all of the 30%? Probably not. Does it explain some of it? Probably.
I could be ignorant about whether Sweden celebrates April Fool's, but...

Only a small proportion of the file sharing population have the nous to sort it out.

If they drive off the majority of the file sharers, their job is done. The tech underground will keep swapping files like they always have done, its getting the masses off browse and click bittorrent that's the main objective.

You raise an excellent point, which briefly made me think, awesome - no matter what I'll still be able to get what I need.

Thing is, I think that torrenting, burning, unraring, playback has made many many 'dummy' users much smarter than they ever would be on a machine previously.Furthermore, they have a taste for it now, if they find torrents are shut down, they will ask their geeek friends what to do instead.

It's currently in its second season here in Sweden. But I don't have a TV, nor do I have the time to watch it when it's on the telly. Oh, and it's in regular TV-quality. The iTunes store sell the TV-show though. But not in the Swedish store. They don't sell ANY movies or TV-shows in the Swedish store.

I can buy the first two seasons on DVDs (and maybe blu-ray, not sure), but since most of the people I talk with on a daily basis are from the US, I can't really talk about the TV-shows - it's like being more than a year behind with the news. Current events aren't really all that current.

I've seen the first season on DVDs. It's a cool show. I'd like to keep up with it. I'm more than willing to pay the I think 35$ an HD quality season costs on iTunes, but aparently my money aren't good enough for these people (I doubt it's Apple's decision).

Browsing through the US store I see lots of shows I'd like to watch and buy. Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog being one of them, but again, that's only available in the US store. That makes no sense though, as I can buy it on Amazon, and it's not like that show will ever be syndicated - what TV-network would buy a 3 episode show with a total runtime of 45 minutes?

Hell, I'm willing to pay two dollars to watch an episode of something, just to see if it's any good.

Essentially my dilemma is as follows:I can break the law by making a fraudulent claim that I'm in the US and buy the stuff I want. I'm sure this is illegal in other ways than the fraud bit.I can break the law by downloading the shows I want to watch and sample new stuffI can buy a TV, wait a few years for my local networks to hopefully pick up shows that I'll find interesting and then watch it.

I don't really want a TV - partly because I am then forced to pay a yearly tax on it, partly because I don't really watch it. I had a 42" plasma from janurary 2008 to august 2008, and I think I watched a combined total of 4 hours of TV on it, the rest was gaming and watching movies.

I don't really want to break the law. I don't mind paying to support the production costs of the stuff I like, I don't mind paying to support a distribution system I like. But aparently I'm not the kind of person, "they" want to cater to.

"They" could learn a LOT from The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. I can watch their shows within a day of them being aired with no restrictions. They used to have embedded ads in their commercial breaks (not a problem), but they stopped that a while back, probably because the ads were aimed at a US audience. The Daily Show is even syndicated in Denmark - the broadcaster manages to put subtitles on it and show it with a two day delay, so it's not like there isn't a foreign market for it either.

My point is this:"They" have no aparent interest in selling their stuff to me. My money obviously isn't good enough for them. If that's the case, why the fuck do they care if I download their stuff? It's not like it's a lost sale - they obviously do not want to sell it to me!

Or another anecdote: there is a movie we want to watch. No rental store in the entire country seems to have it. No shop in the entire country has it (it came out on VHS and was apparently never put onto DVD). I can't rent it, I can't buy it - so I downloaded it via a torrent.
This is similar to the Google kerfluffle about out-of-print books. If the rights-owners can't be bothered to keep a work in the market, then the work is comparatively worthless to them. They really have no ethical basis to complain wh

I have to admit that I stopped downloading my favorite TV shows on April 1st. The legislation scared quite a few people, and we're adopting a wait-and-see policy. But plenty of people I talked to didn't change their habits when it comes to bittorrent.
Being in a student dorm, every room's got its own internet connection. I approached my "koriddor-mates", and they were split on the issue. Then, I proposed getting rid of our connections to keep just one for the entire floor. We can then share it (it's a 100Mb line), absorb the cost of a VPN (it's not much, but you know how every penny counts for students) and save plenty.
Whose loss is it? The ISP who's going to lose five customers!

The same (short term drop in traffic) was seen in Finland (a neighbour country) when they implemented their IPRED1 law. A few months later however the traffic was back to "normal" again, and P2P traffic continue to rise.

Tor was not designed [torproject.org] for the type and levels of traffic BitTorrent generates. Using it for torrents squeezes out people who actually need to remain anonymous [torproject.org]. Widespread use of Tor for torrents would be a disaster for freedom.